


Dreams (come what may)

by torinighthawk



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Gen, Prompt Fic, does Tommy's death need a warning?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 18:35:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4532820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torinighthawk/pseuds/torinighthawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s hot, even for Starling in the summer and it’s crazy really that the woman is here at all. This place holds very little meaning to her anymore, but here she is all the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams (come what may)

It’s hot, even for Starling in the summer and it’s crazy really that the woman is here at all. This place holds very little meaning to her anymore, but here she is all the same. She’s sweating now but she plows on, headed where? She’s not sure. All she knows is that something is pulling her toward this spot. She makes it to the place and is surprised to find herself at the crest of a hill overlooking a kingdom, a kingdom she once might have ruled, but now it lays desolate, hollow.

She falls to her knees before the stone and weeps but finds she cannot cry only sob on and on. She’s not sure how long she’s been here, probably not long, but she’s hyper aware of a presence beside her. Next to her sitting crisscross-applesauce on the browning grass is a boy she knows well, and yet doesn’t know at all. He tilts his head and gives a sad little smile before wiping a tear from her cheek, she had shed tears after all, she hadn’t noticed.

_This isn’t right._

_This isn’t happening._

_You’re dead._

 

The man smiles for real now and it’s so normal for her, so true to what he would do, that she starts to believe he’s there with her. Sitting beside her like he did all those years ago, in the grass, in front of the engraved stones, under the wide oak tree that sheltered those lost to her forever, as lost to her forever as the boy beside her now.  
When she looks back up he’s gone and she can feel the panic set in.

_No don’t leave me again please._

_But it’s dark now and no one can hear her and…_

_Oh, God. Please don’t leave me here alone, again._

She wakes up in her bed, and for a minute it’s almost as if the last nine years never happened. She comes to realize soon that she’s wrong, this is not the room of her childhood, and it’s not warm but cold. The sheets are dark and rougher than anything she has ever slept on. She’s in her apartment and that’s worse. She has to get out now before she suffocates.

 

She doesn’t know why or how she ended up here. It’s cold, even for Starling in the winter and it’s stupid really that she came here at all. This place is no longer her home, but the feeling will not leave her until she does this. The feeling is pulling her toward this spot. She makes it to the crest of the snow covered hill and the wide oak, devoid of all its pretty leafs. She looks out to the Kingdom that will never be hers again, she doesn’t want or need it like she did once upon a time and the hollow feeling is no longer uncomfortable when she sees the desolation of what was once Fool's Gold-plated grandeur.

She falls to her knees in the cold before the engraved stone, but this time she doesn’t weep. Ghosts sleep under this ground, the man who loved her and the boy who held her tight. This time she doesn’t weep, she knows these ghosts well and they know her.

_And she knows with frightening certainty that she’ll never be alone._

_Thank you._

_Never leave me._

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so this is the first Arrow fic I've posted anywhere, ever. Please tell me what you think. This started thanks to my friend who sent me this weird prompt.


End file.
